It's Over

Hard to believe, but senior and commencement weeks came and went. Move out was hectic and miserable as always. It would have been nice to be given more than a single day after graduation to leave--perhaps Sunday instead of Friday. It also might have been nice to end with senior week after commencement week, mainly because commencement week is stressful and less fun and senior week is pure awesome. You'd think for a school determined to fuel its money making enterprise, they would make an effort to maximize student satisfaction at the very end. Then again, they're probably relying on our desire to make sure our future kids have the best chance to get in (the "just in case it helps" method).

In the end, it was an amazing ride and a privilege I only began to realize as it came to an end. Oh Harvard...it's been fun.

Ben Bernanke: so boring

It's fortunate for the sake of posterity that I didn't write about Class Day immediately after the event, as my bitterness was practically palpable. I actually felt owed something afterwards.

Bernanke was bad on two fronts. First, as a speaker, he was dry and his speech was completely uninspiring (read: boring as hell). It was literally an economics lecture with a little sprinkling of commencement relevance. But I don't blame him. As he said in his opening remarks, the senior committee must have known what they were getting themselves into when they invited an economist to speak at an event typically known for...interesting people. Oh well.

J.K. Rowling though was an excellent commencement speaker. Her quality speech was only helped by her cute accent and excellent delivery. Still, the commencement day show was stolen by the high sheriff of Middlesex county, who opened the ceremonies with an incredible shout. The crowd went wild.

Housing Woes

Not a particularly momentous occasion to end a year-long hiatus, but such is the motivation a senior thesis gives:

Maybe the elitism isn't robust enough anymore, because someone in Uhall has been letting in more people than before. We're crammng more and more students into a campus which--until the Allston expansion happens in 2150--is not getting any bigger.

Winthrop house has now done away with n+1 housing. Which means that every common room will have someone living in it. No more nice rooms. I have no vested interest in the acceptance rate (except as a function to make my degree more valuable), but maybe someone needs to examine the freshman class numbers. Or convert some more housing. Still, let's not get ahead of ourselves, it's not as though Harvard has a terrible satisfaction rating...oh wait. That's right.

It's the little things that matter, guys, like having the swanky luxurious housing that used be reserved only for rich white protestant males.

A better way to CUE

Why would I be receiving an email like this from Dean David Pilbeam on May 10:

I write to the select group of you who still have one or more of your course evaluations left to complete. As you know, e-mail reminders do not go to students who have satisfied this part of their academic obligations.

A) That's not true, I got about three a day all last term after I had already completed mine. Lies.
B) I have two weeks until my evaluations are due. Don't antagonize me. I always do mine, so maybe you should email the select group who do it and say 'thank you' before you send emails that have somewhere between no and negative impact.

Stop making this optional--the incentive that a house can make $5000 with the highest participation is nice, but somehow I imagine the kind of people who don't care enough to do their course evaluations are probably among the people who also don't care about their houses either. How about, you can't see your final grades until you do your CUE reports? That might be a more effective start.

"Crucially, [we] are tired all the time..."

At a dismally attended (big surprise) meeting concerning teaching reform, the Crimson reports:

Professor of Latin Kathleen M. Coleman called for “mutual commitment on the part of teachers and learners.”

“As the ancient Greeks knew, if all the oarsmen are put on one end of the trireme, it will sink or at least sail around in circles,” the classicist said. “Some students don’t come to class, or they come late, or they surf the Web during lectures or even sections, I’ve noticed.”

“Crucially, they are tired all of the time. Factors like these are not the elephant in the room. They are an entire herd of elephants, and they will trample all of us and our students to death,” Coleman said to hearty applause.

I would venture that in classes with high ratings (which should correlate to overall quality), the attendance, timeliness, and participation of students is quite high. On the other hand, classes which suck or core classes (which have students in them who don't want to be there) probably suffer most from students' sleeping and surfing. Just as one doesn't eat every meal served in the dining hall with the same gusto, so the effort varies accordingly to course quality. The professors that suffer the most from this appalling student behavior have in many cases brought it upon themselves.

And yes, we are tired all the time. At least I am. But there isn't much teachers could do to help that could they? Yawn.

Someone is missing a mirror

Because the 8:40 shuttle from Boylston I was riding clipped at least one car on the way to the Quad. A pop, a screech, and some loving sparks lit the night for some lucky cars parked next to Cambridge Common.

I wonder what the policy is for when Harvard shuttle drivers hit and run?

(I'm kidding. She didn't hit and run, I'm sure she'll go back on the next round like an hour later and deal with it.)

The pres

I have no strong feelings about the next president, Drew Gilpin Faust. That's probably because like everyone else, I've never really heard that name. Ever. It's nice to have a woman in office to be sure, though this appointment would seem to have less to do with her and more to do with Summers. But whatever it takes to enact progressive change, I suppose...

What I do find troubling is the lack of interest in the position. My personal vote for the reason why no one wants this job is the shitty working environment due to excessive beuracracy and do-nothing professors. I'm not convinced of their goodwill when they could barely get a quorum together if punting Summers wasn't on the agenda.

Somehow I doubt a Dean of the Radcliffe Institute and boss of a whopping 81 people was really the first choice. Seems like decent consolation prize, but we're fooling no one by pretending this is the direction we were looking to go after Summers resigned last year.

And the next president is...oops!

The Harvard Lampoon strikes, proving once again, that they're not actually creative, funny, or particularly good at crafting fake emails:

February 2007

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

On behalf of Harvard’s governing boards, we write to inform you that a decision has been reached regarding Harvard’s next president. The search for Harvard’s next president has been a long and arduous process. Students, faculty, and alumni alike have dedicated countless hours throughout these past seven months. Special thanks are in order to the undergraduate student advisory committee: Whitney S. F. Baxter ’07, Katherine A. Beck ’08, and Vivek G. Ramaswamy ’07.

We are pleased to announce the reinstatement of Lawrence H. Summers as Harvard’s once and future president. We understand that the decision may come as a surprise to those that have been following the selection process. After reviewing the candidates, however, we have come to the conclusion that Dr. Summers is best suited to lead Harvard, particularly in our plans for Allston and beyond.

To address concerns regarding Dr. Summers’ previous tenure, we will be hosting an open forum discussion with Dr. Summers to be held in Sanders Theater on February 5, at 5:00 P.M. Three hundred seats will be available for undergraduate students, to be distributed by an open lottery. To enter the lottery, please call the Presidential Search Committee at (646) XXX-XXXX, and leave your name and e-mail address. The deadline to enter is tonight, February 3, at midnight.

Again, thank you for your patience and support throughout this process.

Sincerely,

The Presidential Search Committee

Since when have school lotteries ever been done by the "call a random phone number in New York" method? Of course, the number is not random, it's the cell of ex-Crimson EIC, William Ciro Marra. And thus, unceremoniously, the ingenious phase 2 of the lampoon prank:

Dear Students,

Please disregard the earlier e-mail labeled “Announcement from the Presidential Search Committee.” The e-mail was a hoax. We are currently looking into the source of this misinformation.

Given the substantial confusion caused by the incident, we feel compelled to make the actual announcement one day early. Former Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, has been selected as the 28^th President of Harvard University. An official press release will be issued in the upcoming hours, as well as a more formal introduction.

Now, THAT is slightly more crafty. Except once again, the sender's email address is incorrect upon investigation. I suppose we were past due for one of these, but I liked last year's better.

Ivory Tower: Season 4, Episode 2

Came out online way back on January 15th, but between studying and not studying, it's sometimes hard to find time for the leisurely things, like the guilty pleasure that is the college soap.

This episode finds its home in The Game 2006 (which at this rate means the third and final episode of the season should land us sometime around first semester finals).
Certainly more awkward sexual tension and release than last season--especially with the director's bizarre male striptease as an easter egg after the credits. Clearly, the guiding forces of this season are the desperate desire to get drunk/laid and the growing need to make the Peer Advising program even more awkward than it is in real life. Clocks in at 0:24.46.

Just Make it Mandatory

And the CUE saga lives on another year. Since moving to optional online forms, participation has gone way down--the school now resorts to constantly begging its student body through an endless barrage of emails (which, as it turns out, seem to actually make people not want to fill out the evaluations).

Most recently, Clifton Dawson, star football player writes us to do our duty:

Hey football fans,

Was your class easy? Did you have an amazing intellectual experience? Are you glad you didn't go to Yale?

If you answered "YES" to any of these questions, then don't just keep it to yourself -- share it with the rest of us!

We've all benefited from the CUE in the past, and now is our opportunity to share our opinions for the future generations of CUE users. If not for future generations, or for me, then remember that $10,000 is up for grabs. Check it out at www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/evals/responserates.pdf

So, as we all cram for exams, I'd like to remind everyone to fill out the CUE Online evaluations. They're available through the "Courses" tab on my.harvard.edu.

I hope you'll take a few minutes to fill out the evaluations online. You can do so until the morning of the final for the course, and for courses with no final, until January 23. Don't miss your chance to give your thoughts and feedback to professors, TFs, and the rest of us. Do the CUE!


Thanks very much. Good luck on finals.

Clifton Dawson, Harvard Football #33

Bizarre. Why am I receiving this email? Am I even a football fan? Make the CUE mandatory or incentivize it for the individual. The school has offered the house with the greatest participation $10,000--good idea. But if you really want everyone to fill out their forms, you have to make it personally rewarding. After all, people are generally selfish beings that only act in their best interest.

Naomi Pierce, professor of OEB57, offered everyone in the class 10 points on top of their 1000 point course total if 60 out of the 70 students filled out the forms. Prior to email, 29 people had responded. A few hours later, the total was 66.

Still, I'm more for coercion. Let's not spare the rod, simply record whether or not someone has completed their CUE evaluations. Pin numbers of those who haven't completed them cannot log in to view next years results. Sure--others could log on for them, but I think it's important to send the message: "you need to do this" and not "we would appreciate it if you did"

If you want a real picture of what the class experience, you can't rely on just the people that loved it, hated it, or were so bored they sat down and did it. You need everyone.